


knocked living the hell out of me

by timber (calculus)



Category: SEVENTEEN (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Domestic Fluff, F/M, Gen, Getting Together, Kid Fic, M/M, Non-Linear Narrative, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Single Parents, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-09-13
Updated: 2017-09-13
Packaged: 2018-12-27 10:27:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,746
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12079221
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/calculus/pseuds/timber
Summary: Single parenthood can be a struggle, especially when you're a mess like Jeon Wonwoo. Kwon Soonyoung's not quite got a handle on adulthood either, but at least they've got each other to fall back on.Or, a slice-of-life series in the cohabitation of a single dad, his tween daughter, and their god-send babysitter.





	knocked living the hell out of me

**034.**

Soonyoung gets up the earliest, not because he's an early riser, but because Jihye has morning band practice on Fridays, so he has to make breakfast and get her out of bed before seven. It was a struggle the first few months, having to startle awake to the blaring sounds of SHINee’s Ring Ding Dong opening verse and then stare blankly at the speckled ceiling until his brain resets and realizes why he’s conscious at such an ungodly hour.

Now, it’s still a struggle, and some days Soonyoung thinks he can probably get away with just sleeping in another thirty minutes and giving Jihye a banana and rapid boiling some instant ramyeon for breakfast when he finally gets up, but he has worked past the temptation so far. He turns off the alarm on his cellphone and dances on the cold floorboards for a minute while he hops into some pants strewn on the floor before shuffling his way out of his room to the shared bathroom between him and Jihye’s door.

Breakfast isn’t the quintessential Korean mother spread of steaming rice and at least eight different side dishes studding a light jjigae because a) Soonyoung honestly has had cereal and packaged bread for the majority of his life and b) it’s six in the fucking morning and he’s a babysitter, not a goddamn housewife. But he knows Jihye has a preference for fried eggs in the morning, so he compromises with leftover rice, a plateful of sunny-side eggs, gim to wrap and a bit of Wonwoo’s mother’s homemade kimchi. Wonwoo doesn’t usually get up until an hour or so later Fridays now that Soonyoung’s taken over the morning routine, and usually he doesn’t feel like eating anything heavier than vegetable crackers, so Soonyoung only makes enough for him and Jihye.

Today, he feels extra generous and ambitious, so Soonyoung gets out the block of tofu pushed into the back of the fridge shelf and the doenjang from the meticulously packed cooler. Bean-paste stew isn’t one of the hardest things to make, but it’s one of the things Soonyoung does on very few occasions because he still can’t quite get the same taste of his mother’s jjigae and it always sours on his tongue when he picks at it. But, Jihye loves doenjang-jjigae, and his recipe has been a regular hit with both the old and young Jeons, so it’s a nice surprise every now and then to put in the extra effort for it.

Once he has the pot bubbling and his ingredients gently cooking, he washes his hands and sets the table with mismatched bowls of rice, neatly cut pieces of gim on the new ceramic plate he’d picked up at the sijang, and the last bit of kimchi left from Heejin-eommeonim’s winter batch with clean scissors to cut the leaves with. Then he climbs back up the stairs, wincing at the creak in his knee joints with every other step, and stops by Jihye’s room, door still closed and quiet. He knocks perfunctorily and opens it slowly, wary to catch another incident of her in a state of undress, but Jihye is still conked out in bed, her tuft of dark brown hair poking out of a large blanket burrito.

He leans against the doorframe, wry smile on his face, and watches her sleep in peace for a minute more before coming in and lifting the edges of her blanket and flinging it off her with a loud shout:

“Rise and shine, Jeon Jihye, it’s time to face the world again!”

Jihye doesn’t quite scream, but she does curl up into a ball, pulling her legs up in an attempt to stay off the exposed air. It doesn’t work, and she turns her head to beadily stare up at Soonyoung, face wrinkled with pillow creases and the dead-eye stare she inherited from her father.

“Oppa, if you don’t let me go back to sleep this minute, I will kick you where the sun doesn’t shine and laugh about it in your face.” Soonyoung just grins, cheeky and unrepentant, and pulls her upright on the bed. “Ugh, I regret letting dad take you in; he’s the actual _worst_ with his charity cases.”

“Your words may be hurtful, but I know you only love me, Jihye-yah,” he sings, and ruffles her bird’s nest hair into an even bigger mess. Jihye swats at him like a fly, but makes to get up after slapping her cheeks awake. “Anyway, I made jjigae today, so come down if you don’t want to fight your dad for it.”

She snorts and pushes him out of the room. “We both know I can take him, it’s not even a question.”

* * *

After he sends Jihye off to the bus stop with her flute case, extra lunch money and a noogie that she weathers with resignation, Soonyoung cleans up the kitchen. The extra jjigae he puts in the microwave to keep warm, stacking the leftover bowl of rice and sides on top for space. The table is wiped down clean with a dishtowel, and when it’s all over, Soonyoung stands in the middle of the kitchen, hands propped up on his hips, and stretches out the kinks in his back. It’s quiet in the house, now that Jihye’s waken and left, and it’ll be another hour before Wonwoo is conscious enough to crawl downstairs for sustenance.

He thinks about going back to bed, the siren call of his soft mattress and pillows inviting, but he’s fully awake now and it feels like a waste of the day if he goes back to sleep now. Instead, Soonyoung grabs a book from the main bookshelf in the living room, a behemoth of a library with all the books that Wonwoo gets from both press-signs and early copy-releases from work. He was never much of a reader, to the despair of his parents and his teachers, but extended living with the biggest book nerds this side of the Han River has instilled a better appreciation of passing the time with pretty words.

This is how Wonwoo finds him, an hour and a half later, lounging on their cushy sofa, head pillowed on its arm and a Lee Chang-rae novel held above him. Soonyoung sneaks a glance from behind the safety of his pages, and Wonwoo is just propping himself on the wall-frame by the living room entrance, watching him in silence.

“You know this is honestly super creepy, right?” he says with a huff of laughter, bringing his book down to hide his smile. Wonwoo snorts, drags a hand through the rat nest his hair is still in, and shrugs. His glasses are jammed on, a little askew on the bridge of his nose, and Soonyoung wants to fix them a lot.

“You signed up for this, so you’re not allowed to complain,” Wonwoo croaks, voice gravelly and still sleep-coated.

“I was lured in under false pretenses; I demand a lawyer,” Soonyoung jokes, and Wonwoo laughs wholly at this, a deep sound that reverberates in his body. “You want breakfast? Jihye was magnanimous today and left you a whole bowl of doenjang jjigae.”

“Such kindness from my own flesh and blood. I’ve taught her well, clearly,” Wonwoo says, smirking. The glasses slide a little further down his face, but he makes no attempt to adjust them, and Soonyoung feels like he’s very craftily being baited with temptation.

“Actually, that’s all me, thank you very much. You guys were a bunch of lawless animals before I came into your lives, don’t even lie.” Wonwoo laughs again, muffling it with a hand. “I’ve worked damn miracles.”

“That’s true, you did get her to stop leaving all her clothes around the house after you brought your friends over that one time for dinner,” Wonwoo agrees, “although I think it was probably more the sheer mortification than anything.”

“The look on her face when she came home and Seokminnie was literally picking up her training bra,” Soonyoung recalls with fondness. “Anyway, I still get credit for that.”

“Mm, okay, you’re the real fairy godmother of this family,” Wonwoo says with a shrug, pushing himself off the wall to come hover over Soonyoung. He feels his heart beat faster at the closed distance, and presses the book to his face to hide the rising heat in his cheeks.

“Don’t hover, man, you’re really not helping your case right now,” Soonyoung protests, trying to press himself further into the sofa. Wonwoo leans in, but only with an arm to ruffle at his bedhead, strong fingers curling through sheaths of hair. He doesn’t purr because he’s not actually a cat or has the vocal cords for it, but it’s a soothing feeling, and he leans into it.

“What’s on your schedule today, Soonyoung-ssi, king of housewives,” Wonwoo asks, a smile in his voice. Soonyoung narrows his eyes at him and reaches over to pinch his knees, bunching fabric over knobbly bone.

“One, don’t make me throw your breakfast down the drain. Two, I have classes later in the mid-afternoon, so you’re on your own for lunch today. You think you can handle that?”

Wonwoo shrugs, scratching lightly against Soonyoung’s scalp, and hides a smile at his poorly-suppressed mewl. “I think I still have crackers in the cabinets and kimchi in the fridge if I really get hungry.”

Soonyoung huffs and lifts the book off his face to give Wonwoo the full-force of his stern disapproval. “This is why you keep getting ulcers, you idiot. You need to be eating proper meals.”

“Well, you should’ve thought of that before you signed up for afternoon classes,” Wonwoo teases, scrunching his nose at him. Soonyoung rolls his eyes and smacks him lightly in the leg with the book.

“Shut up, loser, you don’t get any input in my class scheduling. Anyway, I knew this was gonna happen, so I put extra leftovers in the back of the fridge where Jihye can’t reach. Remember to eat them or I’m gonna feed you squid for dinner if I still see them in the shelves when I come home later.”

Wonwoo laughs and gives a fond murmur of assent, and ruffles his hair one last time before making excuses to go and brush his teeth. Soonyoung watches him go with a quirked mouth, equal fondness and affection simmering low in his belly. Then he makes himself get up to heat up the dishes for Wonwoo to eat.

**Author's Note:**

> i'm the slowest writer on this planet earth clearly but i want instant gratification so here we are, serializing what could've just been a one-shot. (but that one-shot would probably take another six months, gods willing.)
> 
> i'm gonna be updating this on pure whimsy, so who knows when else we'll see another update? still, it's a personal goal to fill up the soonwoo tag with as many fluffy fics as possible, so. also, so much crap that i post is unbeta'd (except probably the ones i care about most WHOOPS), so if you see any mistakes, don't hesitate to let me know!


End file.
